Talking Tigers: Part 2 of a 12-part series In December 2013 at the Tadoba Tiger Reserve in India, we finally got the word: Three confiscated steel-jawed poacher’s traps would be brought to the Forest Department office at one o’clock, and we’d been granted permission to film them. We grabbed our equipment and jumped in the car. The rutted, mostly-dirt roads were so bad that it would take 45 minutes to drive some seven miles to get there. National Geographic photographer Steve Winter and I had come to Central India to shoot the short video above, Battling India’s Illegal Tiger Trade, on one of the most devastating threats facing the world’s last 3,000 wild tigers: poaching. Tigers are walking gold, worth a fortune on the black market. The demand is huge and prices continue to skyrocket. The cats are being slaughtered across India and their entire range, mostly for their bones and their magnificent pelts. (Related: “‘Cyberpoaching’ Feared as New Threat to Rare Wildlife“) The…Read More

TIGER NEWS for FEBRUARY 2014 FEATURED Federal wildlife officials Friday proposed Endangered Species Act protections for the wolverine in the Lower 48 states. FROM AROUND THE WEB 11.22.13: USFWS Releases List of Candidates for ESA The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released the Candidate Notice of Review, a yearly appraisal of plants …Read More

Tigers are the largest of the big cats, the most popular, and the most at-risk for extinction. Over the past 100 years, tiger populations have seen a decrease of around 95%. While exact counts are difficult to make, it has been widely accepted that perhaps as few as 3,200 tigers are currently in the wild. Even India, often regarded as the nation…Read More